“Am I touching you?” he asked in that low, stirring tone that seemed to roll through her, quietly devastating her, reducing her to little more than mindlessness and need.
She turned then, before her knees collapsed beneath her, and found her back against the door with nothing before her but Leo. As if he was all the world.
He leaned closer, resting his hands against the paned glass on either side of her head, a move that brought his mouth nearly flush with hers.
And though she could feel him in every part of her—in her swollen breasts, her taut belly, her molten femininity—he did not touch her. He kept his promise. He only gazed down at her, his eyes hard with a passion she recognized all too well.
“I cannot stop wanting you,” he said then, his mouth a breath away, his sensual lips close enough to kiss. “And I have tried. Nights I lay awake, cursing your name, and yet here I am—as ready for you as if there was no history between us, no years apart, no demands for a divorce.”
“Leo …” But she could not seem to form any words save his name, even then, when she knew she should end this moment, whatever it was.
She should not let him speak these things out loud, making both of them remember. Making her yearn. Ache. Want.
But all she could do was stare up at him and hope her heart did not beat so hard, so frantically, that it might break through her own ribs as she half-feared it might.
“You are under my skin,” he whispered as if it was torn from him. “You are like a poison. You cannot seem to kill me, but I cannot seem to be rid of you.”
He had said too much, Leo thought, and yet he did not step back.
He could not seem to make his own body obey him, not when she was so close. He could feel her breath against his skin, close enough that he could smell the unique scent of her. Like lavender and vanilla—her own delectable perfume.
He could count the freckles that splayed across her nose, and knew what the larger one on her clavicle tasted like. He felt it when their breath began to move in sync, as it always had—as if their bodies insisted on synchronizing even as they dedicated themselves to remaining at war.
This close to her, he could not even remember why.
“You …” She could not manage to speak. He watched, fascinated, as she wet her soft lips and swallowed. “You must let me go.”
“How many times must I let you go?” he heard himself whisper. Worse, he heard the emotion that was underneath it. The jagged pain. What was more horrifying was that he did not immediately move away from her. Not even then.
“You say you want me,” she said in a low, urgent voice, her impossible blue eyes wide with a sheen that told him he was not the only one rubbed raw by this encounter, no matter that they were not actually touching.
“I do,” he agreed. “Just as you want me, Bethany. I can feel it. I can see it.”
“You say that,” she continued as if it hurt her to push the words out. Her eyes searched his, something desperate there reaching out to him. “But you only want me if you can keep me in a convenient box of your choosing. If I behave, if I conform, if I act according to your rules, then I am treated like a queen. But it’s still a box.”
“You are confusing a box with a bed,” he said. Her mouth was so close and her skin would be so soft and he could not believe he had made such a foolhardy promise, much less that he intended to keep it—even now when he was so hard it bordered on the painful.
“With you they are often the same thing,” she said.
No matter how much he yearned simply to sink into her, he could not miss the reproving tone she used. He tilted his head back slightly and gazed at her, taking in that high red flush across her neck, the determined set of her jaw, the cool gleam in her eyes.
“I am only telling you the truth,” she said after a long moment. She took a breath that lifted her breasts alluringly, but he refused to be sidetracked. “Nothing I did happened in a vacuum, Leo. You were as responsible for what happened in our marriage as I was. But I suppose it’s easier to look only at me, isn’t it?”
“I looked for you for three long years,” he gritted out. He was so close to her it bordered on madness, yet he still did not touch her. “But you were never where you were supposed to be. Tell me what I was meant to do. Beg? Plead? Weep?”
“Why not?” she whispered fiercely. “Why not all of the above, if that is how you feel?”
“I am not you,” he whispered back in the same hard tone, shoving through the things he refused to admit, even to himself. “I cannot flash my every emotion for all to see.”
“You cannot or you will not?” She moved then, only slightly, but it brought her shoulder into glancing contact with his arm. They both froze, focused on that single, accidental touch. He watched her swallow, the long, graceful column of her throat begging for his mouth, his tongue, his teeth.